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Important Notice: The Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN) closed in May, 2000. HHIN Web pages are provided as archived information only, and are not currently maintained. Information contained on the HHIN Web pages may be out-of-date. Current information is available through the Hanford Community Health Project, which is updated by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Release of Radioactive Materials from Hanford: 1944-1972
This report presents information on the release of radioactive materials into the environment from Hanford's historical operations (1944-1972). While smaller releases have continued since 1972, the Congressional mandate for the Hanford Health Information Network (HHIN) limits the Network to providing information about the releases of radioactive materials from 1944 to 1972. This publication provides a brief historical sketch and describes Hanford's releases into the air, water and soil. The last section discusses the uncertainties in the estimates of the amount of radioactive material released and whether the government continues to withhold important information.
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| Green Run |
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Most of Hanford's radioactive releases happened as part of routine operations. But Hanford's largest single release of iodine-131 was the result of a secret military experiment. "Green Run" refers to a secret U.S. Air Force Experiment at Hanford that released somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000 curies of iodine-131 to the air on December 2-3, 1949. The experiment was called the Green Run because it involved a processing "run" of uranium fuel that had been cooled for only a short time (16 days), and was, therefore, "green." The normal practice in 1949 was to cool the fuel 90 to 100 days before processing. The longer cooling time allows for radiation, especially iodine-131, to decay to lower levels.
The reported purpose of the Green Run was to test monitoring equipment the Air Force was developing for its intelligence activities concerning the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program. The Green Run remained a top government secret until the 1980s when reports were made public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The requests were filed by the Hanford Education Action League and the Spokesman-Review newspaper, both based in Spokane. The U.S. Air Force continues to withhold significant information about the Green Run including the names of the official(s) who ordered the experiment and the intelligence unit that participated in the monitoring. |
Some radionuclides, while not posing a significant risk to the public, might have been a special hazard to workers, security guards and soldiers at Hanford. This situation is part of continuing HEDR work and a report is expected in 1998.
HEDR estimated the amounts of iodine-131 and other radioactive materials Hanford released into the air between 1944 and 1972. Table I (below) presents the radionuclides for which specific estimates were made. The release estimates are in curies, a unit of measurement of radioactivity. As an example, HEDR estimated that Hanford released about 740,000 curies of iodine-131 from 1944 to 1972. For comparison purposes, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979 released an estimated 15 to 24 curies of iodine-131, and the Chernobyl accident released an estimated 35 million to 49 million curies of iodine-131 in 1986. Table I also presents the half-life (a measurement of the rate of radioactive decay) of each radionuclide.
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TABLE I HEDR Estimates of Radiation Released into the Air by Hanford, 1944-1972 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Radionuclide | Amount Released (curies)7 | Half-Life |
| Iodine-131 | 740,000 | 8 days |
| Tritium (H-3) | 200,000 | 12 years |
| Cobalt-60 | 1 | 5 years |
| Krypton-85 | 19,000,000 | 11 years |
| Strontium-89 | 700 | 50 days |
| Strontium-90 | 64 | 29 years |
| Zirconium-95 | 1,200 | 64 days |
| Ruthenium-103 | 1,200 | 39 days |
| Ruthenium-106 | 390 | 370 days |
| Iodine-129 | 46 | 16 million years |
| Tellurium-132 | 4,000 | 78 hours |
| Xenon-133 | 420,000 | 5 days |
| Cesium-137 | 42 | 30 years |
| Cerium-144 | 3,800 | 284 days |
| Plutonium-239 | 1.8 | 24,000 years |
Particles
Some of the radiation released to the air was attached to particles. The earlier HEDR work did not include particle releases (therefore, the release estimates in Table I will need to be updated). HEDR is studying the releases of ruthenium and plutonium particles.
Most of the ruthenium particles were released between 1952 and 1954. Some were found as far away as Spokane. Particles containing plutonium and other radionuclides were released in large numbers from at least 1945 until 1951. These particles were also found in Spokane as well as on Mount Rainier and along the Idaho-Montana border. For more detail, please refer to HHIN's Potential Health Problems from Exposure to Selected Radionuclides.
Tritium
In addition to producing plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, Hanford also produced tritium, which is another nuclear weapons material. HEDR reported that Hanford's tritium production resulted in an estimated 200,000 curies being released to the air from the 108-B facility. These releases occurred from 1949 through 1954 with more than half being released in 1954.9
Tritium was also released from the production and processing of plutonium. Air releases from the reactors contained tritium; however, HEDR did not report a total amount released.10 Hanford's plutonium separations plants released tritium to the air as well, but HEDR did not report any estimate for the total amount.
The first eight nuclear reactors at Hanford used large amounts of Columbia River water to directly cool the reactor cores. The water went through the reactors once and then back into the Columbia River, carrying radioactive materials with it. In addition, radioactive materials that built up inside the reactors were regularly flushed loose during cooling system purges and entered the Columbia River.
These eight reactors were at their highest power between 1955 and 1965. Contamination of the Columbia River was highest during this time. The last of these eight reactors shut down in January 1971.
HEDR estimated that five radioactive substances accounted for most of the dose people received from the Columbia River. They are zinc-65, arsenic-76, phosphorus-32, sodium-24 and neptunium-239. Table II lists these and other radionuclides that were released to the Columbia River. Based upon scoping studies, HEDR decided not to include in the dose estimates the other radionuclides listed here because, in HEDR's opinion, these did not contribute significantly to the dose to the public.
| TABLE II HEDR Estimates of Radiation Released into the Columbia River by Hanford, 1944-1971 |
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|---|---|---|
| Radionuclide | Amount Released (curies)11 | half-life |
| Sodium-24 | 13,000,000 | 15 hours |
| Phosphorus-32 | 230,000 | 14 days |
| Scandium-46 | 120,000 | 84 days |
| Chromium-51 | 7,200,000 | 28 days |
| Manganese-56 | 80,000,000 | |
| Zinc-65 | 490,000 | 245 days |
| Gallium-72 | 3,700,000 | 14 hours |
| Arsenic-76 | 2,500,00 | 26 hours |
| Yttrium-90 | 450,000 | 64 hours |
| Iodine-131 | 48,000 | 8 days |
| Neptunium-239 | 6,300,000 | 2.4 days |
People received exposure from the river in several ways: eating contaminated fish and shellfish, drinking contaminated water, swimming in or boating on the Columbia River downstream from Hanford, or spending time along the river shoreline. According to HEDR, eating fish and shellfish was the main way people were exposed to radiation from Hanford's reactors. For further information, please see HHIN's Radionuclides in the Columbia River: Possible Health Problems in Humans and Effects on Fish.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, about 60 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from the chemical separations plants are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. The tanks contain about 200 million curies of radioactivity. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons, containing over 100,000 curies of radioactivity, have leaked into the soil. At present, it is uncertain whether any of this waste has reached the groundwater.
In contrast to the tank wastes, it is known that much of the groundwater underneath Hanford has been contaminated by radioactive process wastes. The separations plants required large amounts of water to process plutonium and this water became contaminated inside the plants. Hanford has estimated that over 440 billion gallons of these radioactive wastes were dumped into the ground. Some radioactive materials traveled through the soil and entered the groundwater. During Hanford's early years, other radioactive wastes penetrated the groundwater through "injection wells," or shafts drilled deep into the ground.
Tritium is the most commonly found radionuclide in the groundwater at Hanford. Ruthenium-106, technetium-99 and iodine-129 are three of the other radioactive materials commonly found in Hanford's groundwater. Some radioactive substances still remain in the soil and may enter the groundwater in the future.
HEDR concluded that there was little human contact with the contaminated groundwater in the past. In the future, Hanford's groundwater contamination could pose a danger to the public.
Hanford also buried solid wastes in the soil. This waste contains nearly 5 million curies of radioactivity.
| downwinder perspective |
When [my youngest son] was seven--and again when he was eight years old--I had two surgeries for thyroid cancers. I didn't tell people because it would be hard on our children.... In 1985 my husband died quite suddenly. Early in 1986 word got out that radioactive iodine-131 and other pollutants had been released in large amounts by the government just to see what would happen to us downwinders from the nuclear plant at Hanford, Washington. With the injuries from my thyroid cancers and the worry over my husband's bladder and bone cancers, I was very angry and felt betrayed by my government. They used us as guinea pigs but we weren't even that good because the government never followed up to see what did happen to us downwinders. I write poems, but they are all too mild for my anger at my government. BETRAYAL It's as safe as mother's milk, they'll say
So I fed poison to my nursing son
Written by a woman who has lived all of her life in Eastern Washington and remembers consuming local milk and produce. Her husband loved to fish the Columbia River downstream from Hanford. Name withheld by request. |
While HEDR has been the only study to estimate radioactive releases from Hanford, there have been several scientific reviews of HEDR's work. A committee of the National Research Council (NRC) reviewed two summary HEDR reports and concluded that "while the work that went into these reports is impressive, the reports are not adequate in their present form in that some serious questions remain."13 However, the committee did not review all of the background reports that contained key details of how the project estimated the amounts released and the resulting exposures. HEDR's Technical Steering Panel responded with a letter to CDC which said in part: "While we appreciate the NRC review of the Project's work, we are concerned that the review was incomplete and the NRC conclusions are therefore misleading."14
As part of the consolidated lawsuits brought by about 3,000 downwinders against former Hanford contractors, each side has hired scientific experts to prepare reports that assess HEDR's work. The judge hearing the case has also retained a scientific expert. Most of the reports prepared by the experts have not been released publicly. News articles have described one as saying that Hanford released hundreds of times more plutonium than HEDR estimated.15 CDC has told the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington that "while CDC does not routinely provide formal review and comment on documents related to ongoing litigation issues, CDC staff do review and consider documents such as these for any new technical information they might contain. None of these reviews suggests that there are major unresolved methodological issues associated with the HEDR report produced to date."16
Concerning HEDR's work on the radionuclides released to the Columbia River, another scientist has completed a critique recommending additional 17 This report should be available to the public in 1997.
Reconstructing how much radiation Hanford released into the environment is difficult for three main reasons: (1) there are gaps in the historical information; (2) environmental monitoring techniques were being pioneered during Hanford's early years; and (3) so much time has elapsed since the first releases. Because of incomplete knowledge or missing information, there is an amount of uncertainty associated with the HEDR release estimates. This section explains how HEDR reported uncertainty in the release estimates, what was not included in the estimates, and whether the government continues to withhold historical information.
Range of Release Estimates
Scientists generally report their estimates as a range of numbers, from the lowest that is reasonable to the highest. This range of numbers represents how confident the scientists are that their estimates reflect the amounts of radioactive materials that were actually released. If the range from low to high numbers is relatively small, then the scientists are more certain that their estimates accurately reflect what happened. If the range is large, then the scientists are not as certain in their estimates. The HEDR range of uncertainty is large.
Table III presents the range of release estimates for the six radionuclides released to the air that HEDR used in its dose estimates. The numbers shown here as "average"are also the ones that were used in Table I.
| TABLE III Range of Uncertainty: HEDR Estimates of Air Releases from Hanford, 1944-1972 (in curies) |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Radionuclide | Low | Average | High |
| Iodine-131 | 630,000 | 740,000 | 980,000 |
| Ruthenium-103 | 330 | 1,200 | 4,100 |
| Ruthenium-106 | 110 | 390 | 1,400 |
| Strontium-90 | 23 | 64 | 180 |
| Cerium-144 | 1,400 | 3,800 | 11,000 |
| Plutonium-239 | 0.1 | 1.8 | 31.0 |
The other radionuclides that were released to the air were considered only during the initial scoping studies. The scoping studies do not include enough information to be able to estimate the uncertainty range for release estimates of these other radionuclides.
For the radionuclides discharged to the Columbia River, HEDR did not report the release estimates in such a way that the uncertainty of the estimates can be easily summarized. Those wanting to review the uncertainty in the estimates of river releases can find some of this information in Appendix B, "Monthly Releases from Eight Single-Pass Hanford Production Reactors," in "Radionuclide Releases to the Columbia River from Hanford Operations, 1944-1971," PNWD-2223, dated May 1994.
Are the Estimates Complete?
The HEDR estimates do not include all of the radioactive material released to the environment as the result of Hanford operations. The dose reconstruction study did not consider all of the possible sources of release because the study's scientists focused their efforts on the sources that, in their opinion, likely contributed the most to the public's exposure. Additionally, HEDR included only a few of the accidental releases because the study's scientists assumed that the accidental releases did not contribute much to the public's total dose (due to these releases being so much smaller than the huge routine releases).
A question yet to be examined is how the accidental and other releases might have affected Hanford workers and military personnel stationed at Hanford. Because workers and soldiers were closer to the sources of the radioactive releases and were in unique situations, they had different exposures than the public. For example, soldiers at Hanford slept in tents only a few miles from the plutonium plants. This important situation is being considered as part of the remaining HEDR work. This work is expected to be complete in 1998.
Is the Government Still Withholding Information?
Many downwinders have asked if the government might still be withholding something about Hanford's environmental releases. Several callers to HHIN over the years have recounted personal experiences (some from former Hanford workers) that are not reported in the historical documents and were not included in HEDR's work. This is yet another source of uncertainty and of unanswered (perhaps unanswerable) questions.
If people want to add their own documents, photographs and recollections about their experience of Hanford's releases, they can contribute copies to the Hanford Health Information Archives. The Archives is a joint project of the Hanford Health Information Network and Gonzaga University, which is located in Spokane, Washington. The toll-free phone number is 1-800-799-HHIA (4442).
Even though there may always be questions about whether the government is withholding information about the Hanford releases, the U.S. Department of Energy has made great progress in declassifying historical documents. Over the past three years, it has declassified more pages than it has classified. Under the leadership of then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary, the department made millions of pages of documents available to the public as part of the Openness Initiative. Of these, about 400,000 pages were declassified by Hanford. Some can be accessed through the Department of Energy.
1 - The atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, contained enriched uranium from a plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
2 - Ken Niles, "Reconstructing Hanford's Past Releases of Radioactive Materials: The History of the Technical Steering Panel 1988-1995," Technical Steering Panel (TSP) publication, November 1996.
3 - HEDR reported that three radionuclides were the most important: tritium, carbon-14 and argon-41. However, HEDR did not report a total amount released. For details of the work done, see C.M. Heeb, "Radionuclide Releases to the Atmosphere from Hanford Operations, 1944-1972," PNWD-2222 HEDR, May 1994, Section 5.0.
4 - The five months in 1945 were May, August, September, October and December.
5 - PNWD-2222, p. B.3.
6 - For a complete listing of all 237 radionuclides, please see the HHIN publication A Listing of Radionuclides Released from Hanford, September 1996.
7 - Please note that the numbers are all rounded to two significant figures. Sources: W.T. Farris, et al., "Atmospheric Pathway Dosimetry Report, 1944-1992," PNWD-2228 HEDR, October 1994, p. B.4.; B.A. Napier, "Determination of Radionuclides and Pathways Contributing to Cumulative Dose," BN-SA-3673 HEDR, December 1992, p. B.8;
M.A. Robkin and B. Shleien, "Estimated Maximum Thyroid Doses from I-129 Releases from the Hanford Site for the Years 1944-1995," Health Physics, Vol. 69 (6), December 1995,
pp. 917-922; C.M. Heeb and S.P. Gydesen, "Sources of Secondary Radionuclide Releases from Hanford Operations," PNWD-2254 HEDR, May 1994, Section 7.
8 - More information about iodine-131 and the thyroid can be found in other HHIN publications: An Overview of Hanford and Radiation Health Effects and Health Bulletin.
9 - C.M. Heeb and S.P. Gydesen, "Sources of Secondary Radionuclide Releases from Hanford Operations," PNWD-2254 HEDR, May 1994, Section 7.
10 - For details of the work done, see C.M. Heeb, "Radionuclide Releases to the Atmosphere from Hanford Operations, 1944-1972," PNWD-2222 HEDR, May 1994, Section 5.0.
11 - Please note that the numbers are all rounded to two significant figures. Sources: C.M. Heeb and D.J. Bates, "Radionuclide Releases to the Columbia River from Hanford Operations, 1944-1971," PNWD-2223 HEDR, May 1994, p. vii.
12 - "Historical Perspective of Radioactively Contaminated Liquid and Solid Wastes Discharged or Buried in the Ground at Hanford," TRAC-0151-VA, April 1991. Commonly referred to as the "Wodrich Report." See also M.D. Freshley and P.D. Thorne, "Ground-Water Contribution to Dose from Past Hanford Operations." PNWD-1974 HEDR, August 1992.
13 - Committee on an Assessment of CDC Radiation Studies, National Research Council, A Review of Two Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project (HEDR) Dosimetry Reports: Columbia River Pathway and Atmospheric Pathway (National Academy Press, 1995), p. 2.
14 - Letter from Mary Lou Blazek (TSP Chair) to Jim Smith (Radiation Studies Branch, CDC), June 21, 1995.
15 - Karen Dorn Steele, "Plutonium Filters Called Defective," Spokesman-Review (June 30, 1996), and Jim Thomas, "Radiation Science Update" in HHIN's Connections (Fall 1996).
16 - Letter from Michael J. Sage (Radiation Studies Branch, CDC) to Stephen E. West (Idaho Division of Health), November 18, 1996.
17 - Jim Thomas, "Radiation Science Update," Connections (Winter 1997).
Published Spring 1997
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